The SmallHD 502 monitor was one of the stars of this year's NAB Show in Las Vegas. SmallHD managed to pack some significant horsepower and features into a 5-inch iPhone sized display with class leading 1080p resolution and colour depth giving cinematographers and camera operators around the world the confidence and assurance they were capturing the best possible images from their cameras.
Recenlty, the company also added the SmallHD 501 monitor, which retains the features of the 502 except for the SDI In/Out but at a lower price point, allowing DSLR users and those who do not have SDI capacity on their cameras to take advantage of the incredible features of the 500 series monitors from SmallHD. The company just released firmware version 1.0 for both monitors, which adds even more feature such as image overlay, anamorphic de-squeeze, on-screen audio meters and many more.
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New Features in Firmware 1.0:

Image Capture  Menus must be closed to use. Press capture button to hide all active tools and show capture guides. Release to capture raw image (Captures JPG Images to SD card) -Will not work if no SD card is installed. Image Overlay Load any image from the SD card and display it at varying opacity levels over your live camera feed. Also you can have overlayed image blink on and off for framing purposes HD Waveform Luma and RGB waveform added user selectable location and size On-Screen Audio Meters and Headphone Output Shows 2-8 channels, adjustable size and location. Canon DSLR Scale Fill the whole screen with image from a Canon DSLR Image Flip / Auto Image Flip Allows you to flip / mirror monitor image (by default auto rotate will be enabled) Anamorphic De-squeeze Monitor a non-squashed image when shooting with anamorphic lenses. Selected in settings menu & applies to all pages (includes 1.33x, 1.66x, 2x) Colour Calibration LUT Change the built-in color calibration of your monitor using your own 3D LUT file — this is very different from applying 3D LUTs to the live camera feed on multiple pages Known bugs with Firmware 1.0:
  • Anamorphic de-squeeze does not interact well with image overlay or guides.
  • Image capture – all images are stretched to 1920 wide.
  • Exposure assist (ie. false colour) Acts on LUT Data when a LUT is in use instead of raw image data
  • If you use peaking and zebra at the same time, the zebra can have some false readings.
  • Histogram – when incoming data is YCC, the RGB histogram display can be slightly inaccurate.
  • Signal issues – Very rarely 1080p 50/59/60 through HDMI may have trouble locking on – disconnecting and then reconnecting HDMI cable should fix the problem (This can occur with 1080i signals as well from time to time).
How do I update the firmware on my 500 Series monitor?
  1. Download .zip file by clicking here 2. Unzip file (extract files) 3. Read the included ReadMe .txt file to see what changes are included 4. Drag and drop .bin file from download onto your SD card (Must be 16GB or smaller – FAT32 Format) 5. Remove SD Card from computer or card reader attached to computer 6. Insert SD card into your 500 series monitor 7. Turn on your monitor 8. On monitor, page left all the way with your joystick to the monitor’s Setting Menu 9. Select firmware update in settings menu and follow on screen promts 10. Once firmware is installed and the on screen prompt tells you to reboot your monitor – remove the power source and then re-attach the power source to reboot (power button will not work for this reboot) Download firmware 1.0 for SmallHD 501 and 502 here.